Governor Carleton, 1766-1774

The twelve years of Carleton's first administration
naturally fall into three distinct periods of equal length. During
the first he was busily employed settling as many difficulties as he
could, examining the general state of the country, and gradually
growing into the change that was developing in the minds of the home
government, the change, that is, from the Americanizing sixties to
the French-Canadian seventies. During the second period he was in
England, helping to shape the famous Quebec Act. During the third he
was defending Canada from American attack and aiding the British
counterstroke by every means in his power.

On the 22nd of September 1766 Carleton arrived at Quebec and began
his thirty years' experience as a Canadian administrator by taking
over the government from Colonel Irving, who had held it since
Murray's departure in the spring. Irving had succeeded Murray simply
because he happened to be the senior officer present at the time.
Carleton himself was technically Murray's lieutenant till 1768. But
neither of these facts really affected the course of Canadian
history.

The Council, the magistrates, and the traders each presented. the
new governor with an address containing the usual professions of
loyal devotion. Carleton remarked in his dispatch that these
separate addresses, and the marked absence of any united address,
showed how much the population was divided. He also noted that a
good many of the English-speaking minority had objected to the
addresses on account of their own opposition to the Stamp Act, and
that there had been some broken heads in consequence. Troubles
enough soon engaged his anxious attention--troubles over the Indian
trade, the rights and wrongs of the Canadian Jesuits, the wounded
dignity of some members of the Council, and the still smoldering and
ever mysterious Walker affair.

The strife between Canada and the Thirteen Colonies over the Indian
trade of the West remained the same in principle as under the old
regime. The Conquest had merely changed the old rivalry between two
foreign powers into one between two widely differing British
possessions; and this, because of the general unrest among the
Americans, made the competition more bitter, if possible, than ever.

The Jesuits pressed their claims for recognition, for their original
estates, and for compensation. But their order had fallen on evil
days all over the world. It was not popular even in Canada. And the
arrangement was that while the existing members were to be treated
with every consideration the Society itself was to be allowed to die
out.

The offended councilors went so far as to present Carleton with a
remonstrance which Irving himself had the misfortune to sign.
Carleton had consulted some members on points with which they were
specially acquainted. The members who had not been consulted
thereupon protested to Irving, who assured them that Carleton must
have done so by accident, not design. But when Carleton received a
joint letter in which they said, 'As you are pleased to signify to
Us by Coll. Irving that it was accident, & not Intention,' he at
once replied: 'As Lieutenant Colonel Irving has signified to you
that the Part of my Conduct you think worthy of your Reprehension
happened by Accident let him explain his reasons for so doing. He
had no authority from me.' Carleton then went on to say that he
would consult any 'Men of Good Sense, Truth, Candor, and Impartial
Justice' whenever he chose, no matter whether they were councilors
or not.

The Walker affair, which now broke out again, was much more serious
than the storm in the Council's teacup. It agitated the whole of
Canada and threatened to range the population of Montreal and Quebec
into two irreconcilable factions, the civil and the military. For
the whole of the two years since Murray had been called upon to deal
with it cleverly presented versions of Walker's views had been
spread all over the colonies and worked into influential Opposition
circles in England. The invectives against the redcoats and their
friends the seigneurs were of the usual abusive type. But they had
an unusually powerful effect at that particular time in the Thirteen
Colonies as well as in what their authors hoped to make a Fourteenth
Colony after a fashion of their own; and they looked plausible
enough to mislead a good many moderate men in the mother country
too. Walker's case was that he had an actual witness, as to the
identity of his assailants, in the person of McGovoch, a discharged
soldier, who laid information against one civilian, three British
officers, and the celebrated French-Canadian leader, La Corne de St
Luc. All the accused were arrested in their beds in Montreal and
thrown into the common gaol. Walker objected to bail on the plea
that his life would be in danger if they were allowed at large. He
also sought to postpone the trial in order to punish the accused as
much as possible, guilty or innocent. But William Hey, the chief
justice, an able and upright man, would consent to postponement only
on condition that bail should be allowed; so the trial proceeded.
When the grand jury threw out the case against one of the prisoners
Walker let loose such a flood of virulent abuse that moderate men
were turned against him. In the end all the accused were honorably
acquitted, while McGovoch, who was proved to have been a false
witness from the first, was convicted of perjury. Carleton remained
absolutely impartial all through, and even dismissed Colonel Irving
and another member of the Council for heading a petition on behalf
of the military prisoners.

The Walker affair was an instance of a bad case in which the law at
last worked well. But there were many others in which it did not.
What with the Coutume de Paris, which is still quoted in the
province of Quebec; the other complexities of the old French law;
the doubtful meanings drawn from the capitulation, the treaty, the
proclamation, and the various ordinances; the instinctive opposition
between the French Canadians and the English-speaking civilians;
and, finally, what with the portents of subversive change that were
already beginning to overshadow all America,--what with all this and
more, Carleton found himself faced with a problem which no man could
have solved to the satisfaction of every one concerned. Each side in
a lawsuit took whatever amalgam of French and English codes was best
for its own argument. But, generally speaking, the ingrained feeling
of the French Canadians was against any change of their own laws
that was not visibly and immediately beneficial to their own
particular interests. Moreover, the use of the unknown English
language, the worthlessness of the rapacious English-speaking
magistrates, and the detested innovation of imprisonment for debt,
all combined to make every part of English civil law hated simply
because it happened to be English and not French. The home
authorities were anxious to find some workable compromise. In 1767
Carleton exchanged several important dispatches with them; and in
1768 they sent out Maurice Morgan to study and report, after
consultation with the chief justice and 'other well instructed
persons.' Morgan was an indefatigable and clear-sighted man who
deserves to be gratefully remembered by both races; for he was a
good friend both to the French Canadians before the Quebec Act and
to the United Empire Loyalists just before their great migration,
when he was Carleton's secretary at New York. In 1769 the official
correspondence entered the 'secret and confidential' stage with a
dispatch from the home government to Carleton suggesting a House of
Representatives to which, practically speaking, the towns would send
Protestant members and the country districts Roman Catholics.

In 1770 Carleton sailed for England. He carried a good deal of
hard-won experience with him, both on this point and on many others.
He went home with a strong opinion not only against an assembly but
against any immediate attempts at Anglicization in any form. The
royal instructions that had accompanied his commission as
'Captain-General and Governor-in-chief' in 1768 contained directions
for establishing the Church of England with a view to converting the
whole population to its tenets later on. But no steps had been
taken, and, needless to say, the French Canadians remained as Roman
Catholic as ever.

An increasingly important question, soon to overshadow all others,
was defense. In April 1768 Carleton had proposed the restoration of
the seigneurial militia system. 'All the Lands here are held of His
Majesty's Castle of St Lewis [the governor's official residence in
Quebec]. The Oath which the Vassals [seigneurs] take is very Solemn
and Binding. They are obliged to appear in Arms for the King's
defense, in case his Province is attacked.' Carleton pointed out
that a hundred men of the Canadian seigneurial families were being
kept on full pay in France, ready to return and raise the Canadians
at the first opportunity. 'On the other hand, there are only about
seventy of these officers in Canada who have been in the French
service. Not one of them has been given a commission in the King's
[George's] Service, nor is there One who, from any motive whatever,
is induced to support His Government.' The few French Canadians
raised for Pontiac's war had of course been properly paid during the
continuance of their active service. But they had been disbanded
like mere militia afterwards, without either gratuities or half-pay
for the officers. This naturally made the class from which officers
were drawn think that no career was open to them under the Union
Jack and turned their thoughts towards France, where their fellows
were enjoying full pay without a break.

What made this the more serious was the weakness of the regular
garrisons, all of which, put together, numbered only 1,627 men.
Carleton calculated that about five hundred of 'the King's Old
Subjects' were capable of bearing arms; though most of them were
better at talking than fighting. He had nothing but contempt for
'the flimsy wall round Montreal,' and relied little more on the very
defective works at Quebec. Thus with all his wonderful equanimity,
'grave Carleton' left Canada with no light heart when he took six
months' leave of absence in 1770; and he would have been more
anxious still if he could have foreseen that his absence was to be
prolonged to no less than four years.

He had, however, two great satisfactions. He was represented at
Quebec by a most steadfast lieutenant, the quiet, alert, discreet,
and determined Cramahe; and he was leaving Canada after having given
proof of a disinterestedness which was worthy of the elder Pitt
himself. When Pitt became Paymaster-General of England he at once
declined to use the two chief perquisites of his office, the
interest on the government balance and the half per cent commission
on foreign subsidies, though both were regarded as a kind of
indirect salary. When Carleton became governor of Canada he at once
issued a proclamation abolishing all the fees and perquisites
attached to his position and explained his action to the home
authorities in the following words: 'There is a certain appearance
of dirt, a sort of meanness, in exacting fees on every occasion. I
think it necessary for the King's service that his representative
should be thought unsullied.' Murray, who had accepted the fees, at
first took umbrage. But Carleton soon put matters straight with him.
The fact was that fees, and even certain perquisites, were no
dishonor to receive, as they nearly always formed a recognized part,
and often the whole, of a perfectly legal salary. But fees and
perquisites could be abused; and they did lead to misunderstandings,
even when they were not abused; while fixed salaries were free from
both objections. So Carleton, surrounded by shamelessly rapacious
magistrates and the whole vile camp-following gang, as well as by
French Canadians who had suffered from the robberies of Bigot and
his like, decided to sacrifice everything but his indispensable
fixed salary in order that even the most malicious critics could not
bring any accusation, however false, against the man who represented
Britain and her king.

An interesting personal interlude, which was not without
considerable effect on Canadian history, took place in the middle of
Carleton's four years' stay in England. He was forty-eight and still
a bachelor. Tradition whispers that these long years of single life
were the result of a disappointing love affair with Jane Carleton, a
pretty cousin, when both he and she were young. However that may be,
he now proposed to Lady Anne Howard, whose father, the Earl of
Effingham, was one of his greatest friends. But he was doomed to a
second, though doubtless very minor, disappointment. Lady Anne, who
probably looked on 'grave Carleton' as a sort of amiable,
middle-aged uncle, had fallen in love with his nephew, whom she
presently married, and with whom she afterwards went out to Canada,
where her husband served under the rejected uncle himself. What
added spice to this peculiar situation was the fact that Carleton
actually married the younger sister of the too-youthful Lady Anne.
When Lady Anne rejoined her sister and their bosom friend, Miss
Seymour, after the disconcerting interview with Carleton, she
explained her tears by saying they were due to her having been
'obliged to refuse the best man on earth.' 'The more fool you!'
answered the younger sister, Lady Maria, then just eighteen, 'I only
wish he had given me the chance!' There, for the time, the matter
ended. Carleton went back to his official duties in furtherance of
the Quebec Act. His nephew and the elder sister made mutual love.
Lady Maria held her tongue. But Miss Seymour had not forgotten; and
one day she mustered up courage to tell Carleton the story of 'the
more fool you!' This decided him to act at once. He proposed; was
accepted; and lived happily married for the rest of his long life.
Lady Maria was small, fair-haired, and blue-eyed, which heightened
her girlish appearance when, like Madame de Champlain, she came out
to Canada with a husband more than old enough to be her father. But
she had been brought up at Versailles. She knew all the aristocratic
graces of the old regime. And her slight, upright figure--erect as
any soldier's to her dying day--almost matched her husband's
stalwart form in dignity of carriage.

The Quebec Act of 1774--the Magna Charta of
the French-Canadian race--finally passed the House of Lords on the
18th of June. The general idea of the Act was to reverse the
unsuccessful policy of ultimate assimilation with the other American
colonies by making Canada a distinctly French-Canadian province. The
Maritime Provinces, with a population of some thirty thousand, were
to be as English as they chose. But a greatly enlarged Quebec, with
a population of ninety thousand, and stretching far into the
unsettled West, was to remain equally French-Canadian; though the
rights of what it was then thought would be a perpetual
English-speaking minority were to be safeguarded in every reasonable
way. The whole country between the American colonies and the domains
of the Hudson's Bay Company was included in this new Quebec, which
comprised the southern half of what is now the Newfoundland
Labrador, practically the whole of the modern provinces of Quebec
and Ontario, and all the western lands between the Ohio and the
Great Lakes as far as the Mississippi, that is, the modern American
states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

The Act gave Canada the English criminal code. It recognized most of
the French civil law, including the seigneurial tenure of land.
Roman Catholics were given 'the free Exercise' of their religion,
'subject to the King's Supremacy' as defined 'by an Act made in the
First Year of Queen Elizabeth,' which Act, with a magnificently
prophetic outlook on the future British Empire, was to apply to 'all
the Dominions and Countries which then did, or thereafter should,
belong to the Imperial Crown.' The Roman Catholic clergy were
authorized to collect 'their accustomed Dues and Rights' from
members of their own communion. The new oath of allegiance to the
Crown was silent about differences of religion, so that Roman
Catholics might take it without question. The clergy and seigneurs
were thus restored to an acknowledged leadership in church and
state. Those who wanted a parliament were distinctly told that 'It
is at present inexpedient to call an Assembly,' and that a Council
of from seventeen to twenty-three members, all appointed by the
Crown, would attend to local government and have power to levy taxes
for roads and public buildings only. Lands held 'in free and common
socage' were to be dealt with by the laws of England, as was all
property which could be freely willed away. A possible establishment
of the Church of England was provided for but never put in
operation.

In some ways the Act did, in other ways it did not, fulfill the
objects of its framers. It was undoubtedly a generous concession to
the leading French Canadians. It did help to keep Canada both
British and Canadian. And it did open the way for what ought to have
been a crushing attack on the American revolutionary forces. But it
was not, and neither it nor any other Act could possibly have been,
at that late hour, completely successful. It conciliated the
seigneurs and the parochial clergy. But it did not, and it could
not, also conciliate the lesser townsfolk and the habitants. For the
last fourteen years the habitants had been gradually drifting away
from their former habits of obedience and former obligations towards
their leaders in church and state. The leaders had lost their old
followers. The followers had found no new leaders of their own.

Naturally enough, there was great satisfaction among the seigneurs
and the clergy, with a general feeling among government supporters,
both in England and Canada, that the best solution of a very
refractory problem had been found at last. On the other hand, the
Opposition in England, nearly every one in the American colonies,
and the great majority of English-speaking people in Newfoundland,
the Maritime Provinces, and Canada itself were dead against the Act;
while the habitants, resenting the privileges already reaffirmed in
favor of the seigneurs and clergy, and suspicious of further changes
in the same unwelcome direction, were neutral at the best and
hostile at the worst.

The American colonists would have been angered in any case. But when
they saw Canada proper made as unlike a 'fourteenth colony' as could
be, and when they also saw the gates of the coveted western lands
closed against them by the same detested Act--the last of the 'five
intolerable acts' to which they most objected--their fury knew no
bounds. They cursed the king, the pope, and the French Canadians
with as much violence as any temporal or spiritual rulers had ever
cursed heretics and rebels. The 'infamous and tyrannical ministry'
in England was accused of 'contemptible subservience' to the
'bloodthirsty, idolatrous, and hypocritical creed' of the French
Canadians. To think that people whose religion had spread 'murder,
persecution, and revolt throughout the world' were to be entrenched
along the St Lawrence was bad enough. But to see Crown protection
given to the Indian lands which the Americans considered their own
western 'birthright' was infinitely worse. Was the king of England
to steal the valley of the Mississippi in the same way as the king
of France?

It is easy to be wise after the event and hard to follow any counsel
of perfection. But it must always be a subject of keen, if
unavailing, regret that the French Canadians were not guaranteed
their own way of life, within the limits of the modern province of
Quebec, immediately after the capitulation of Montreal in 1760. They
would then have entered the British Empire, as a whole people, on
terms which they must all have understood to be exceedingly generous
from any conquering power, and which they would have soon found out
to be far better than anything they had experienced under the
government of France. In return for such unexampled generosity they
might have become convinced defenders of the only flag in the world
under which they could possibly live as French Canadians. Their
relations to each other, to the rest of a changing Canada, and to
the Empire would have followed the natural course of political
evolution, with the burning questions of language, laws, and
religion safely removed from general controversy in after years. The
rights of the English-speaking minority could, of course, have been
still better safeguarded under this system than under the
distracting series of half-measures which took its place. There
should have been no question of a parliament in the immediate
future. Then, with the peopling of Ontario by the United Empire
Loyalists and the growth of the Maritime Provinces on the other
side, Quebec could have entered Carleton's proposed Confederation in
the nineties to her own and every one else's best advantage.

On the other hand, the delay of fourteen years after the
Capitulation of 1760 and the unwarrantable extension of the
provincial boundaries were cardinal errors of the most disastrous
kind. The delay, filled with a futile attempt at mistaken
Americanization, bred doubts and dissensions not only between the
two races but between the different kinds of French Canadians. When
the hour of trial came disintegration had already gone too far. The
mistake about the boundaries was equally bad. The western wilds
ought to have been administered by a lieutenant-governor under the
supervision of a governor-general. Even leasing them for a short
term of years to the Hudson's Bay Company would have been better
than annexing them to a preposterous province of Quebec. The
American colonists would have doubtless objected to either
alternative. But both could have been defended on sound principles
of administration; while the sudden invasion of a new and inflated
Quebec into the colonial hinterlands was little less than a
declaration of war. The whole problem bristled with enormous
difficulties, and the circumstances under which it had to be faced
made an ideal solution impossible. But an earlier Quebec Act,
without its outrageous boundary clause, would have been well worth
the risk of passing; for the delay led many French Canadians to
suppose, however falsely, that the Empire's need might always be
their opportunity; and this idea, however repugnant to their best
minds and better feelings, has persisted among their extreme
particularists until the present day.

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Chronicles of Canada, The
Father of British Canada, A Chronicle of Carleton, 1915